explained. She wore her reading-spectacles and not her far-seeing ones;
besides, her reading spectacles were obscured by dust and her nephew's
face was nearly obliterated. Also as she shook him his face was not much
in evidence. Johnny disliked, naturally, to tell his aunt Janet that her
own sister and brother-in-law were the parents of such a wicked little
boy. He therefore kept quiet and submitted to the shaking, making
himself as limp as a rag. This, however, exasperated Aunt Janet, who
found herself encumbered by a dead weight of a little boy to be shaken,
and suddenly Johnny Trumbull, the fighting champion of the town, the
cock of the walk of the school, found himself being ignominiously
spanked. That was too much. Johnny's fighting blood was up. He lost all
consideration for circumstances, he forgot that Aunt Janet was not a
boy, that she was quite near being an old lady. She had overstepped the
bounds of privilege of age and sex, and an alarming state of equality
ensued. Quickly the tables were turned. The boy became far from limp. He
stiffened, then bounded and rebounded like wire. He butted, he parried,
he observed all his famous tactics of battle, and poor Aunt Janet sat
down in the dust, black dress, bonnet, glasses (but the glasses were
off and lost), little improving book, black silk gloves, and all; and
Johnny, hopeless, awful, irreverent, sat upon his Aunt Janet's plunging
knees, which seemed the most lively part of her. He kept his face
twisted away from her, but it was not from cowardice. Johnny was afraid
lest Aunt Janet should be too much overcome by the discovery of his
identity. He felt that it was his duty to spare her that. So he sat
still, triumphant but inwardly aghast.
It was fast dawning upon him that his aunt was not a little boy. He was
not afraid of any punishment which might be meted out to him, but he was
simply horrified. He himself had violated all the honorable conditions
of warfare. He felt a little dizzy and ill, and he felt worse when
he ventured a hurried glance at Aunt Janet's face. She was very pale
through the dust, and her eyes were closed. Johnny thought then that he
had killed her.
He got up--the nervous knees were no longer plunging; then he heard a
voice, a little-girl voice, always shrill, but now high pitched to a
squeak with terror. It was the voice of Lily Jennings. She stood near
and yet aloof, a lovely little flower of a girl, all white-scalloped
frills and ribbons, with a big white-frilled hat shading a pale little
face and covering the top of a head decorated with wonderful yellow
curls. She stood behind a big baby-carriage with a pink-lined muslin
canopy and containing a nest of pink and white, but an empty nest.
Lily's little brother's carriage had a spring broken, and she had been
to borrow her aunt's baby-carriage, so that nurse could wheel little
brother up and down the veranda. Nurse had a headache, and the
maids were busy, and Lily, who was a kind little soul and, moreover,
imaginative, and who liked the idea of pushing an empty baby-carriage,
had volunteered to go for it. All the way she had been dreaming of what
was not in the carriage. She had come directly out of a dream of doll
twins when she chanced upon the tragedy in the road.
“What have you been doing now, Johnny Trumbull?” said she. She was
tremulous, white with horror, but she stood her ground. It was curious,
but Johnny Trumbull, with all his bravery, was always cowed before Lily.
Once she had turned and stared at him when he had emerged triumphant
but with bleeding nose from a fight; then she had sniffed delicately and
gone her way. It had only taken a second, but in that second the victor
had met moral defeat.
He looked now at her pale, really scared face, and his own was as pale.
He stood and kicked the dust until the swirling column of it reached his
head.
“That's right,” said Lily; “stand and kick up dust all over me. WHAT
have you been doing?”
Johnny was trembling so he could hardly stand. He stopped kicking dust.
“Have you killed your aunt?” demanded Lily. It was monstrous, but she
had a very dramatic imagination, and there was a faint hint of enjoyment
in her tragic voice.
“Guess she's just choked by dust,” volunteered Johnny, hoarsely. He
kicked the dust again.
“That's right,” said Lily. “If she's choked to death by dust, stand
there and choke her some more. You are a murderer, Johnny Trumbull, and
my mamma will never allow me to speak to you again, and Madame will not
allow you to come to school. AND--I see your papa driving up the street,
and there is the chief policeman's buggy just behind.” Lily acquiesced
entirely in the extraordinary coincidence of the father and the chief of
police appearing upon the scene. The unlikely seemed to her the likely.
“NOW,” said she, cheerfully, “you will be put in state prison and locked
up, and then you will be put to death by a very strong telephone.”
Johnny's father was leaning out of his buggy, looking back at the chief
of police in his, and the mare was jogging very slowly in a perfect reek
of dust. Lily, who was, in spite of her terrific imagination, human and
a girl, rose suddenly to heights of pity and succor. “They shall never
take you, Johnny Trumbull,” said she. “I will save you.”
Johnny by this time was utterly forgetful of his high status as champion
(behind her back) of Madame's very select school for select children of
a somewhat select village. He was forgetful of the fact that a champion
never cries. He cried; he blubbered; tears rolled over his dusty cheeks,
making furrows like plowshares of grief. He feared lest he might have
killed his aunt Janet. Women, and not very young women, might presumably
be unable to survive such rough usage as very tough and at the same time
very limber little boys, and he loved his poor aunt Janet. He
grieved because of his aunt, his parents, his uncle, and rather more
particularly because of himself. He was quite sure that the policeman
was coming for him. Logic had no place in his frenzied conclusions. He
did not consider how the tragedy had taken place entirely out of sight
of a house, that Lily Jennings was the only person who had any knowledge
of it. He looked at the masterful, fair-haired little girl like a baby.
“How?” sniffed he.
For answer, Lily pointed to the empty baby-carriage. “Get right in,” she
ordered.
Even in this dire extremity Johnny hesitated. “Can't.”
“Yes, you can. It is extra large. Aunt Laura's baby was a twin when
he first came; now he's just an ordinary baby, but his carriage is big
enough for two. There's plenty of room. Besides, you're a very small
boy, very small of your age, even if you do knock all the other boys
down and have murdered your aunt. Get in. In a minute they will see
you.”
There was in reality no time to lose. Johnny did get in. In spite of the
provisions for twins, there was none too much room.
Lily covered him up with the fluffy pink-and-lace things, and scowled.
“You hump up awfully,” she muttered. Then she reached beneath him and
snatched out the pillow on which he lay, the baby's little bed. She gave
it a swift toss over the fringe of wayside bushes into a field. “Aunt
Laura's nice embroidered pillow,” said she. “Make yourself just as flat
as you can, Johnny Trumbull.”
Johnny obeyed, but he was obliged to double himself up like a
jack-knife. However, there was no sign of him visible when the two
buggies drew up. There stood a pale and frightened little girl, with a
baby-carriage canopied with rose and lace and heaped up with rosy and
lacy coverlets, presumably sheltering a sleeping infant. Lily was a very
keen little girl. She had sense enough not to run. The two men, at the
sight of Aunt Janet prostrate in the road, leaped out of their buggies.
The doctor's horse stood still; the policeman's trotted away, to Lily's
great relief. She could not imagine Johnny's own father haling him away
to state prison and the stern Arm of Justice. She stood the fire of
bewildered questions in the best and safest fashion. She wept bitterly,
and her tears were not assumed. Poor little Lily was all of a sudden
crushed under the weight of facts. There was Aunt Janet, she had no
doubt, killed by her own nephew, and she was hiding the guilty murderer.
She had visions of state prison for herself. She watched fearfully
while the two men bent over the prostrate woman, who very soon began to
sputter and gasp and try to sit up.
“What on earth is the matter, Janet?” inquired Dr. Trumbull, who was
paler than his sister-inlaw. In fact, she was unable to look very pale
on account of dust.
“Ow!” sputtered Aunt Janet, coughing violently, “get me up out of this
dust, John. Ow!”
“What was the matter?”
“Yes, what has happened, madam?” demanded the chief of police, sternly.
“Nothing,” replied Aunt Janet, to Lily's and Johnny's amazement. “What
do you think has happened? I fell down in all this nasty dust. Ow!”
“What did you eat for luncheon, Janet?” inquired Dr. Trumbull, as he
assisted his sister-inlaw to her feet.
“What I was a fool to eat,” replied Janet Trumbull, promptly. “Cucumber
salad and lemon jelly with whipped cream.”
“Enough to make anybody have indigestion,” said Dr. Trumbull. “You have
had one of these attacks before, too, Janet. You remember the time you
ate strawberry shortcake and ice-cream?”
Janet nodded meekly. Then she coughed again. “Ow, this dust!” gasped
she. “For goodness' sake, John, get me home where I can get some water
and take off these dusty clothes or I shall choke to death.”
“How does your stomach feel?” inquired Dr. Trumbull.
“Stomach is all right now, but I am just choking to death with the
dust.” Janet turned sharply toward the policeman. “You have sense enough
to keep still, I hope,” said she. “I don't want the whole town ringing
with my being such an idiot as to eat cucumbers and cream together and
being found this way.” Janet looked like an animated creation of dust as
she faced the chief of police.
“Yes, ma'am,” he replied, bowing and scraping one foot and raising more
dust.
He and Dr. Trumbull assisted Aunt Janet into the buggy, and they drove
off. Then the chief of police discovered that his own horse had gone.
“Did you see which way he went, sis?” he inquired of Lily, and she
pointed down the road, and sobbed as she did so.
The policeman said something bad under his breath, then advised Lily to
run home to her ma, and started down the road.
When he was out of sight, Lily drew back the pink-and-white things from
Johnny's face. “Well, you didn't kill her this time,” said she.
“Why do you s'pose she didn't tell all about it?” said Johnny, gaping at
her.
“How do I know? I suppose she was ashamed to tell how she had been
fighting, maybe.”
“No, that was not why,” said Johnny in a deep voice.
“Why was it, then?”
“SHE KNEW.”
Johnny began to climb out of the baby-carriage.
“What will she do next, then?” asked Lily.
“I don't know,” Johnny replied, gloomily.
He was out of the carriage then, and Lily was readjusting the pillows
and things. “Get that nice embroidered pillow I threw over the bushes,”
she ordered, crossly. Johnny obeyed. When she had finished putting the
baby-carriage to rights she turned upon poor little Johnny Trumbull, and
her face wore the expression of a queen of tragedy. “Well,” said Lily
Jennings, “I suppose I shall have to marry you when I am grown up, after
all this.”
Johnny gasped. He thought Lily the most beautiful girl he knew, but to
be confronted with murder and marriage within a few minutes was almost
too much. He flushed a burning red. He laughed foolishly. He said
nothing.
“It will be very hard on me,” stated Lily, “to marry a boy who tried to
murder his nice aunt.”
Johnny revived a bit under this feminine disdain. “I didn't try to
murder her,” he said in a weak voice.
“You might have, throwing her down in all that awful dust, a nice, clean
lady. Ladies are not like boys. It might kill them very quickly to be
knocked down on a dusty road.”
“I didn't mean to kill her.”
“You might have.”
“Well, I didn't, and--she--”
“What?”
“She spanked me.”
“Pooh! That doesn't amount to anything,” sniffed Lily.
“It does if you are a boy.”
“I don't see why.”
“Well, I can't help it if you don't. It does.”
“Why shouldn't a boy be spanked when he's naughty, just as well as a
girl, I would like to know?”
“Because he's a boy.”
Lily looked at Johnny Trumbull. The great fact did remain. He had been
spanked, he had thrown his own aunt down in the dust. He had taken
advantage of her little-girl protection, but he was a boy. Lily did not
understand his why at all, but she bowed before it. However, that she
would not admit. She made a rapid change of base. “What,” said she, “are
you going to do next?”
Johnny stared at her. It was a puzzle.
“If,” said Lily, distinctly, “you are afraid to go home, if you think
your aunt will tell, I will let you get into Aunt Laura's baby-carriage
again, and I will wheel you a little way.”
Johnny would have liked at that moment to knock Lily down, as he had his
aunt Janet. Lily looked at him shrewdly. “Oh yes,” said she, “you can
knock me down in the dust there if you want to, and spoil my nice clean
dress. You will be a boy, just the same.”
“I will never marry you, anyway,” declared Johnny.
“Aren't you afraid I'll tell on you and get you another spanking if you
don't?”
“Tell if you want to. I'd enough sight rather be spanked than marry
you.”
A gleam of respect came into the little girl's wisely regarding blue
eyes. She, with the swiftness of her sex, recognized in forlorn little
Johnny the making of a man. “Oh, well,” said she, loftily, “I never
was a telltale, and, anyway, we are not grown up, and there will be my
trousseau to get, and a lot of other things to do first. I shall go to
Europe before I am married, too, and I might meet a boy much nicer than
you on the steamer.”
“Meet him if you want to.”
Lily looked at Johnny Trumbull with more than respect--with
admiration--but she kept guard over her little tongue. “Well, you can
leave that for the future,” said she with a grown-up air.
“I ain't going to leave it. It's settled for good and all now,” growled
Johnny.
To his immense surprise, Lily curved her white embroidered sleeve over
her face and began to weep.
“What's the matter now?” asked Johnny, sulkily, after a minute.
“I think you are a real horrid boy,” sobbed Lily.
Lily looked like nothing but a very frilly, sweet, white flower.
Johnny could not see her face. There was nothing to be seen except
that delicate fluff of white, supported on dainty white-socked,
white-slippered limbs.
“Say,” said Johnny.
“You are real cruel, when I--I saved your--li-fe,” wailed Lily.
“Say,” said Johnny, “maybe if I don't see any other girl I like better
I will marry you when I am grown up, but I won't if you don't stop that
howling.”
Lily stopped immediately. She peeped at him, a blue peep from under the
flopping, embroidered brim of her hat. “Are you in earnest?” She
smiled faintly. Her blue eyes, wet with tears, were lovely; so was her
hesitating smile.
“Yes, if you don't act silly,” said Johnny. “Now you had better run
home, or your mother will wonder where that baby-carriage is.”
Lily walked away, smiling over her shoulder, the smile of the happily
subjugated. “I won't tell anybody, Johnny,” she called back in her
flute-like voice.
“Don't care if you do,” returned Johnny, looking at her with chin in the
air and shoulders square, and Lily wondered at his bravery.
But Johnny was not so brave and he did care. He knew that his best
course was an immediate return home, but he did not know what he might
have to face. He could not in the least understand why his aunt Janet
had not told at once. He was sure that she knew. Then he thought of a
possible reason for her silence; she might have feared his arrest at the
hands of the chief of police. Johnny quailed. He knew his aunt Janet
to be rather a brave sort of woman. If she had fears, she must have had
reason for them. He might even now be arrested. Suppose Lily did
tell. He had a theory that girls usually told. He began to speculate
concerning the horrors of prison. Of course he would not be executed,
since his aunt was obviously very far from being killed, but he might be
imprisoned for a long term.
Johnny went home. He did not kick the dust any more. He walked very
steadily and staidly. When he came in sight of the old Colonial mansion,
with its massive veranda pillars, he felt chilly. However, he went on.
He passed around to the south door and entered and smelled shortcake.
It would have smelled delicious had he not had so much on his mind. He
looked through the hall, and had a glimpse of his uncle Jonathan in the
study, writing. At the right of the door was his father's office. The
door of that was open, and Johnny saw his father pouring things from
bottles. He did not look at Johnny. His mother crossed the hall. She
had on a long white apron, which she wore when making her famous cream
shortcakes. She saw Johnny, but merely observed, “Go and wash your face
and hands, Johnny; it is nearly supper-time.”
Johnny went up-stairs. At the upper landing he found his aunt Janet
waiting for him. “Come here,” she whispered, and Johnny followed her,
trembling, into her own room. It was a large room, rather crowded with
heavy, old-fashioned furniture. Aunt Janet had freed herself from dust
and was arrayed in a purple silk gown. Her hair was looped loosely on
either side of her long face. She was a handsome woman, after a certain
type.
“Stand here, Johnny,” said she. She had closed the door, and Johnny
was stationed before her. She did not seem in the least injured nor the
worse for her experience. On the contrary, there was a bright-red flush
on her cheeks, and her eyes shone as Johnny had never seen them. She
looked eagerly at Johnny.
“Why did you do that?” she said, but there was no anger in her voice.
“I forgot,” began Johnny.
“Forgot what?” Her voice was strained with eagerness.
“That you were not another boy,” said Johnny.
“Tell me,” said Aunt Janet. “No, you need not tell me, because if you
did it might be my duty to inform your parents. I know there is no need
of your telling. You MUST be in the habit of fighting with the other
boys.”
“Except the little ones,” admitted Johnny.
To Johnny's wild astonishment, Aunt Janet seized him by the shoulders
and looked him in the eyes with a look of adoration and immense
approval. “Thank goodness,” said she, “at last there is going to be a
fighter in the Trumbull family. Your uncle would never fight, and your
father would not. Your grandfather would. Your uncle and your father are
good men, though; you must try to be like them, Johnny.”
“Yes, ma'am,” replied Johnny, bewildered.
“I think they would be called better men than your grandfather and my
father,” said Aunt Janet.
“Yes, ma'am.”
“I think it is time for you to have your grandfather's watch,” said Aunt
Janet. “I think you are man enough to take care of it.” Aunt Janet had
all the time been holding a black leather case. Now she opened it, and
Johnny saw the great gold watch which he had seen many times before and
had always understood was to be his some day, when he was a man. “Here,”
said Aunt Janet. “Take good care of it. You must try to be as good as
your uncle and father, but you must remember one thing--you will wear a
watch which belonged to a man who never allowed other men to crowd him
out of the way he elected to go.”
“Yes, ma'am,” said Johnny. He took the watch.
“What do you say?” inquired his aunt, sharply.
“Thank you.”
“That's right. I thought you had forgotten your manners. Your
grandfather never did.”
“I am sorry. Aunt Janet,” muttered Johnny, “that I--”
“You need never say anything about that,” his aunt returned, quickly.
“I did not see who you were at first. You are too old to be spanked by a
woman, but you ought to be whipped by a man, and I wish your grandfather
were alive to do it.”
“Yes, ma'am,” said Johnny. He looked at her bravely. “He could if he
wanted to,” said he.
Aunt Janet smiled at him proudly. “Of course,” said she, “a boy like you
never gets the worst of it fighting with other boys.”
“No, ma'am,” said Johnny.
Aunt Janet smiled again. “Now run and wash your face and hands,” said
she; “you must not keep supper waiting. Your mother has a paper to write
for her club, and I have promised to help her.”
“Yes, ma'am,” said Johnny. He walked out, carrying the great gold
timepiece, bewildered, embarrassed, modest beneath his honors, but
little cock of the walk, whether he would or no, for reasons entirely
and forever beyond his ken.
JOHNNY-IN-THE-WOODS
JOHNNY TRUMBULL, he who had demonstrated his claim to be Cock of the
Walk by a most impious hand-to-hand fight with his own aunt, Miss Janet
Trumbull, in which he had been decisively victorious, and won his spurs,
consisting of his late grandfather's immense, solemnly ticking watch,
was to take a new path of action. Johnny suddenly developed the
prominent Trumbull trait, but in his case it was inverted. Johnny, as
became a boy of his race, took an excursion into the past, but instead
of applying the present to the past, as was the tendency of the other
Trumbulls, he forcibly applied the past to the present. He fairly
plastered the past over the exigencies of his day and generation like a
penetrating poultice of mustard, and the results were peculiar.
Johnny, being bidden of a rainy day during the midsummer vacation to
remain in the house, to keep quiet, read a book, and be a good boy,
obeyed, but his obedience was of a doubtful measure of wisdom.
Johnny got a book out of his uncle Jonathan Trumbull's dark little
library while Jonathan was walking sedately to the post-office, holding
his dripping umbrella at a wonderful slant of exactness, without regard
to the wind, thereby getting the soft drive of the rain full in his
face, which became, as it were, bedewed with tears, entirely outside any
cause of his own emotions.
Johnny probably got the only book of an antiorthodox trend in his
uncle's library. He found tucked away in a snug corner an ancient
collection of Border Ballads, and he read therein of many unmoral
romances and pretty fancies, which, since he was a small boy, held
little meaning for him, or charm, beyond a delight in the swing of the
rhythm, for Johnny had a feeling for music. It was when he read of Robin
Hood, the bold Robin Hood, with his dubious ethics but his certain and
unquenchable interest, that Johnny Trumbull became intent. He had the
volume in his own room, being somewhat doubtful as to whether it might
be of the sort included in the good-boy role. He sat beside a rainwashed
window, which commanded a view of the wide field between the Trumbull
mansion and Jim Simmons's house, and he read about Robin Hood and his
Greenwood adventures, his forcible setting the wrong right; and for the
first time his imagination awoke, and his ambition. Johnny Trumbull,
hitherto hero of nothing except little material fistfights, wished now
to become a hero of true romance.
In fact, Johnny considered seriously the possibility of reincarnating,
in his own person, Robin Hood. He eyed the wide green field dreamily
through his rain-blurred window. It was a pretty field, waving with
feathery grasses and starred with daisies and buttercups, and it was
very fortunate that it happened to be so wide. Jim Simmons's house was
not a desirable feature of the landscape, and looked much better several
acres away. It was a neglected, squalid structure, and considered a
disgrace to the whole village. Jim was also a disgrace, and an unsolved
problem. He owned that house, and somehow contrived to pay the taxes
thereon. He also lived and throve in bodily health in spite of evil
ways, and his children were many. There seemed no way to dispose finally
of Jim Simmons and his house except by murder and arson, and the village
was a peaceful one, and such measures were entirely too strenuous.
Presently Johnny, staring dreamily out of his window, saw approaching a
rusty-black umbrella held at precisely the wrong angle in respect of the
storm, but held with the unvarying stiffness with which a soldier might
hold a bayonet, and knew it for his uncle Jonathan's umbrella. Soon he
beheld also his uncle's serious, rain-drenched face and his long ambling
body and legs. Jonathan was coming home from the post-office, whither
he repaired every morning. He never got a letter, never anything except
religious newspapers, but the visit to the post-office was part of his
daily routine. Rain or shine, Jonathan Trumbull went for the morning
mail, and gained thereby a queer negative enjoyment of a perfectly
useless duty performed. Johnny watched his uncle draw near to the house,
and cruelly reflected how unlike Robin Hood he must be. He even
wondered if his uncle could possibly have read Robin Hood and still show
absolutely no result in his own personal appearance. He knew that
he, Johnny, could not walk to the post-office and back, even with the
drawback of a dripping old umbrella instead of a bow and arrow, without
looking a bit like Robin Hood, especially when fresh from reading about
him.